PHOTO
09 March 2017
By Shane McGinley
(Refiling to remove extraneous text)
Hyperloop One, the United States-based tech start-up developing a high-speed transit system for the United Arab Emirates, is in talks with sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf to raise up to $300 million in funding, its chief executive said on Wednesday.
“Our plans are to raise $200-300 million over the next six months... We are speaking to large investors around the world and some of those are in the region,” Rob Lloyd, chief executive officer of Hyperloop One, said in a phone interview on Wednesday, adding that sovereign wealth funds and pension funds were among those he has had discussions with.
The concept of the Hyperloop uses magnets to levitate pods inside an airless tube, creating conditions in which the floating pods could shuttle people and cargo at speeds of up to 1,200 kph. The theory behind it originated in a paper by Tesla Motors chief executive Elon Musk in 2013.
Last year, the company signed an agreement with Dubai’s Road and Transport Authority (RTA) to explore the development of a Hyperloop link between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, reducing journey times between the two emirates to around 12 minutes.
During a keynote speech at the Middle East Rail conference in Dubai on Tuesday Lloyd said the company is aiming to secure regulatory approval to allow it to start production towards the end of the decade.
“The objective would be to create a playbook for regulatory approvals and we're working with some of the experts around the world to do that. We think we need to have that done in 2018 timeframe so we can begin construction in 2019 and go into production of the Hyperloop somewhere in the region of 2020 to 2021," he said. (Read more here)
Lloyd also released never-before-seen images of the firm’s development site – dubbed DevLoop – in the Nevada desert near Las Vegas.
The 500 metre-long DevLoop, which has a diameter of 3.3 metres, is expected to perform its first public trial in the first half of 2017, the company said in a press statement.
Lloyd confirmed the trials will not include passengers and will initially focus on cargo.
“The test will be the architecture and the full system. The first in the world that will demonstrate that the concept of Hyperloop is working,” he told Zawya.
“We will not have passengers in that test because we haven’t yet done the full safety requirements. From that point forward, several years to certify that for passengers, but we will have a payload that allows us to simulate different weights inside a pod that will be travelling at very high speeds in the desert of Las Vegas.”
© Zawya 2017
By Shane McGinley
(Refiling to remove extraneous text)
Hyperloop One, the United States-based tech start-up developing a high-speed transit system for the United Arab Emirates, is in talks with sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf to raise up to $300 million in funding, its chief executive said on Wednesday.
“Our plans are to raise $200-300 million over the next six months... We are speaking to large investors around the world and some of those are in the region,” Rob Lloyd, chief executive officer of Hyperloop One, said in a phone interview on Wednesday, adding that sovereign wealth funds and pension funds were among those he has had discussions with.
The concept of the Hyperloop uses magnets to levitate pods inside an airless tube, creating conditions in which the floating pods could shuttle people and cargo at speeds of up to 1,200 kph. The theory behind it originated in a paper by Tesla Motors chief executive Elon Musk in 2013.
Last year, the company signed an agreement with Dubai’s Road and Transport Authority (RTA) to explore the development of a Hyperloop link between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, reducing journey times between the two emirates to around 12 minutes.
During a keynote speech at the Middle East Rail conference in Dubai on Tuesday Lloyd said the company is aiming to secure regulatory approval to allow it to start production towards the end of the decade.
“The objective would be to create a playbook for regulatory approvals and we're working with some of the experts around the world to do that. We think we need to have that done in 2018 timeframe so we can begin construction in 2019 and go into production of the Hyperloop somewhere in the region of 2020 to 2021," he said. (Read more here)
Lloyd also released never-before-seen images of the firm’s development site – dubbed DevLoop – in the Nevada desert near Las Vegas.
The 500 metre-long DevLoop, which has a diameter of 3.3 metres, is expected to perform its first public trial in the first half of 2017, the company said in a press statement.
Lloyd confirmed the trials will not include passengers and will initially focus on cargo.
“The test will be the architecture and the full system. The first in the world that will demonstrate that the concept of Hyperloop is working,” he told Zawya.
“We will not have passengers in that test because we haven’t yet done the full safety requirements. From that point forward, several years to certify that for passengers, but we will have a payload that allows us to simulate different weights inside a pod that will be travelling at very high speeds in the desert of Las Vegas.”
© Zawya 2017
